Conclusion
While the cleanout of the monkey house was going on, two out of the four monkey care takers were hospitalized. One had a heart condition; the other had high fever and nausea27. Both men survived their illnesses unharmed. If these men were infected, it is hard to guess why Ebola-Reston did not cause in them the violent, hemorrhagic death it did in the mon¬keys. Perhaps a very tiny difference in the genetic code of the virus made it react differently within the systems of humans and macaques.
And, indeed researchers discovered that this was a new species of Ebola virus, which they named Ebola-Reston15, 28, 29. The new virus was highly pathogenic in monkeys but apparently not in humans. The researchers also dispelled the idea that filoviruses were found only in Africa, because the monkeys had been imported from the Philippines. The investigators documented a high likelihood of aerosol transmission outside a controlled laboratory setting, because the virus appeared to pass between rooms to infect susceptible monkeys. Specimens from animals that died or were killed to eradicate the outbreak yielded fertile ground for research in new Ebola virus detection and identification techniques and the virological and pathological events associated with infection.
